Missing In Rangoon

by Christopher G. Moore

  He removed the Chekhov biography from his jacket pocket.

  “It’s a real paper-and-ink book. You don’t see many of them anymore.”

  She recognized the book that Calvino had bought earlier that night from her bookshop. The Black Cat rose from the bench.

  “I’ve got to go,” she said, fishing a key out of her jeans. “You’ll need a place to stay. Here’s the key to the bookshop. There’s a cot in the back. My grandfather used to sleep in the shop.”

  Calvino extended his hand and she dropped the key into his palm. She must have told Rob that he couldn’t stay there, Calvino thought. The Black Cat must have read his mind.

  “Rob wanted to sleep upstairs in my room. I’m sorry I told him that was impossible. He might still be alive if I’d let him.”

  “Or you might both be dead,” said Colonel Pratt.

  A wave of grief swept across her face, and her shoulders slumped.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  Colonel Pratt looked at the Chekhov biography and the bookshop key sitting on top.

  “Something’s not right, Vincent,” said Colonel Pratt, watching the Black Cat disappear toward Natmauk Road. “She’s just found out about Rob, and now she’s given you a key to where she lives and invited us to a birthday party.”

  “She feels guilty,” said Calvino.

  “She didn’t ask what will happen to Rob’s body. Some women can fake grief. It’s not that hard.”

  “You think she was faking it?”

  The Colonel shrugged.

  “I kept looking for some evidence of shock or remorse or sadness, and what I got was social arrangements.”

  “They said Henry Miller wasn’t sentimental either. But here’s the key,” said Calvino, holding it up. “Maybe it’s her way of showing that she wants to help. To make up for not taking Rob in.”

  “There’s something wrong.”

  Colonel Pratt had something else to say but stopped himself.

  “Don’t go if you think it’s a setup.”

  “You’d go on your own?” asked the Colonel.

  “Yeah, I would. And I’ll stay at her place. I need to explain to Rob’s father that she offered something important. She asked a foreigner to stay in her shop. That’s a big deal. She was one of the last people to see Rob.”

  A rim of orange light broke beyond the lake and the trees. Colonel Pratt muffled a yawn.

  “Maybe she’s playing it straight.”

  “Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt,” said Calvino.

  “You should go back to Bangkok. There’s a morning flight. I’ve done about all I can here. I don’t see that it’s any different for you.”

  “I’m starting to see the potential in Rangoon. I need a couple of more days. I could head back now. I could. But the kid was killed in my room,” said Calvino. “When that happens to a man, he has to try to find some reason for it. I need to know, Pratt.”

  Calvino shrugged as Colonel Pratt got up from the bench.

  “I thought you’d say something like that,” said the Colonel.

  “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t head back. You have reports to file, people to see. And you have a room with a view. You should catch the sunrise.”

  “What if she set up Rob, and now she’s setting you up?”

  “She’d have to dream it first,” said Calvino.

  “It’s a risk,” said Colonel Pratt. “You can joke about it. But that’s not wise.”

  “You’ve been hanging out with Yadanar. Have you closed your deal with him?”

  “It’s in the works.”

  The yellow dome of the Shwedagon lay outside the Colonel’s hotel window, waiting for him to sit on the balcony and enjoy. But he was in no mood for sunrises or temples as he trundled back to the hotel. Calvino watched him follow the same path out of the park that the Black Cat had taken. He sat alone in front of the lake, remembering the brick wall on the other side of the guesthouse window, with Rob’s hallucinations scribbled on it like psychotic graffiti.

  Calvino had never slept inside a bookshop before. This shop came frontloaded with a full buckshot of history and ghosts. There was a small bedroom the size of a large closet in the back. The cot was pushed against the wall. His rooms were shrinking in size and view. This one had no window. It was a cell with a cot, a sink and a hot plate. When he slipped in after dawn, he lay back on the cot, watching a small lizard staring down at him from the ceiling, and the next thing he knew, he was in dreamland, walking among peacocks, lions and chattering monkeys.

  He stumbled into a thicket, tearing his trousers, but battled through, coming out into an open field. He had no idea what the place was called, nor could he recognize any of the faces, bright with laughter and singing. It was a birthday party, and women were dancing and clapping their hands. He was the only foreigner present. Mya was dressed in black leather, cat whiskers painted on her cheeks, her eyelashes thick and black. She stalked and circled and pounced on the piano player.

  Yadanar picked her up and swung her around as if she were a small child. They both laughed, and everyone applauded and started singing “Happy Birthday.” Rob appeared with a birthday cake with more than thirty candles burning bright. Calvino ran toward him, calling his name. The faster he ran, the farther away Rob was, until all Calvino saw was his arm stretched out and his fist shaped like a gun. A large crowd followed Rob. He fired a shot out of his finger as if it were the barrel of a powerful gun. The echo of the shot shattered the silence. The crowd had surrounded an old male elephant stuck in a muddy field. The old bull bellowed and trumpeted and stomped its enormous feet. Calvino watched the bullet spinning in midair, suspended, and Mya jumped up and tried to pluck it from the sky, but she failed. Instead the bullet disappeared into the skull of the elephant. The animal made one last trumpeting sound and fell over dead.

  The crowd applauded. Yadanar launched into “Cry Me a River” on the piano, and Mya began singing into the mike.

  When he woke up, the Black Cat stood at the end of the cot, holding a cup of coffee.

  “You were calling my name,” she said.

  “I had a dream. You were singing. An elephant was shot dead.”

  A smile crossed her face.

  “Tell me. Tell me everything.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  The House Filled with a Thousand Paintings of Dreams

  COLONEL PRATT SHARED a taxi. The Colonel picked Calvino up a block away from the bookshop on 42nd Street. The driver, a Rangoon native, looked at the address for Yadanar’s house and said he knew it. Mya had written the address down in Burmese, having left for the party earlier. She hadn’t wanted to arrive with them.

  Yadanar’s house was in an area most people knew about but had never seen with their own eyes. The dreams people had inside those mansions were filled with monkey kings, peacocks, crocodiles, gold lions and pigs and dogs squealing through halls of power, pagodas, cemeteries, battlefields and bedrooms. The very rich and powerful dreamt their dreams inside these vast old houses left behind by the British and inside modern futuristic domes inspired by visions of the colonial rulers’ grandchildren. Yadanar’s mansion was traditional, a relic of colonization, built on the edge of a densely forested area and situated halfway up a hill that overlooked the Shwedagon Pagoda. His father had acquired it ten years earlier. Yadanar’s family lived in another mansion nearby.

  As the taxi turned up the hill, the night closed in. There were few streetlights to break the uniformity of the dark tunnel of trees. The road seemed to close in on Calvino like a nightmare. The houses were hidden behind high stone walls. The interior roads had few signs posted, perhaps to deter the intrusion of strangers. The driver, though, turned from one small lane to the next without difficulty. He knew where he was going.

  “Some neighborhood,” said Calvino.

  The Colonel sat quietly in the back.

  “Pratt, you’re too quiet. You’re thinking about going home tomorrow?”

  “The birthday par
ty might not be a good idea.”

  Calvino had heard the same reservation early that morning beside Kandawgyi Lake. The time lapse hadn’t changed Pratt’s opinion.

  “You’ve bonded with Yadanar, right? You’re going to see that he breaks into the jazz scene. You’re’ going to help him realize his dream. Tonight he’ll announce in front of all his friends that he’s going on the road to be a superstar. You’ll tell him his name will be on the lips of people in Hollywood and New York. Give him a big face. Then we can go home. When Yadanar owes you, he pulls the plug on cold pill smuggling into Thailand. He wins, you win. Case over.”

  “And if it doesn’t work out that way?”

  “We can worry about that bridge when we come to it.”

  “When I came here, no one had any idea how involved he was, or about his connection with Udom. It would be foolish to think that Yadanar will easily let all of that money go somewhere else.”

  “You don’t trust him?”

  “Would you?”

  Two security guards posted at the front gate sat on plastic stools, smoking cigarettes. Each was heavily armed. The distinctive shapes of two AK-47s revealed themselves in the light pooling from the pillar-top lamps on either side of the gate. Both guards snapped to attention as Colonel Pratt and Calvino approached. The guards used a walkie-talkie to confirm that Colonel Pratt and Calvino were on the guest list. One of them opened the gate, and Calvino and the Colonel walked down a long dark driveway. The interior of the compound was as densely forested as the neighborhood outside. The property felt lonely and isolated as they passed through it together.

  “When I lived in Queens, we were always careful about walking into someone else’s neighborhood.”

  “Most places, it’s the same,” said Colonel Pratt. “You go into another man’s territory without his permission, and next thing there’s a battle.”

  “Luckily, we’re invited guests.”

  Colonel Pratt hardly listened as he scanned the wall for exit points.

  “Not all invitations are to be trusted, Vincent.”

  They walked along a private drive that rose over a small incline and curved slightly to the right. Then for the first time they saw the mansion, which showed lights behind the curtained ground-floor and second-floor windows. The sounds of piano, drums and guitar grew louder. Pratt stopped to consider the lay of the land. It was an enormous mansion, with two stories, verandahs, large arched windows and a driveway filled with the same cars that had been parked in front of the 50th Street Bar.

  The front door of the mansion could have passed for the gate separating Pha Yar Lan train station from Scott’s Market. The door stood open to the night. Calvino pushed it open wider and walked in first. Clusters of young people stood in corners, sat on sofas, walked between rooms or stood with drinks and food that were delivered on trays by three or four circulating servants. They didn’t recognize anyone among the faces until Jack Saxon’s head popped out of a doorway.

  “Vincent, did you have any trouble finding the house?”

  “As easy as finding Insein Prison,” he said.

  Ohn Myint poked her head out beside Saxon.

  “Swamp Bitch!” said Calvino.

  Colonel Pratt did a double take.

  “Remember? It’s her running club handle,” said Saxon, seeing the Colonel’s embarrassed look. “I’m called Pistol Penis.”

  “And Vincent, remind me of your handle, again,” the Colonel said.

  “Kiss my Trash,” said Ohn Myint. “Though Jack said he wanted Alien Warrior instead. It was already taken by one of the US marines.”

  “How could I forget?”asked the Colonel, smiling as he started to relax. It was good to see Jack Saxon among the faces, and the translator who had managed to get Calvino into the courtroom.

  “Yadanar’s busy at the moment,” said Saxon. “Let me take you on a little tour of the house.”

  Saxon ushered them into a large sitting room, where a saxophonist was playing some Dexter Gordon variations to piano accompaniment. Couples sat on the floor, chairs and sofas, lost in the music or talking and drinking. A large joint passed from hand to hand as clouds of smoke gathered above the partiers’ heads. The walls were covered with paintings. More paintings were stacked in the corners or leaned against furniture and walls.

  “Family dreams,” said Saxon, as he saw Calvino studying one of the artworks.

  “There was a painter in my family,” said Calvino. “My grandfather was from Florence.”

  “As far as I know, Yadanar hasn’t ever been out of Burma, and he’s certainly not related to any of the painters whose work you’ll find in this house. Some of them are quite famous. His maternal grandfather was a famous bookseller in Rangoon. He had a shop on 42nd Street, not far from the Strand Hotel. Orwell used to go there to buy books. There’s a rumor he wrote one or more short stories in the room in the back.”

  “Didn’t Orwell write about an elephant?” asked Calvino.

  Saxon smiled. “You Americans really should read more. Did Orwell write about elephants? Does the American president have a helicopter?”

  The landscapes in the paintings were jammed with images of temples, wandering monks, flying bearded beings—half-human, half-horse or lion—white elephants, unicorns, flying fish, lush gardens, children playing games, old people, dead people, warriors in ancient uniforms, stupas and market stalls heaped with precious jewels. Most of the paintings were dreamy, surreal visions—the stuff that Rob had described as he stared out the window. The painters had borrowed from Salvador Dalí, lifting his melting-clock faces, seconds dripping onto the backs of exotic animals. Abstract figures, some with horns or wings or tails, floated among the clouds and stupas.

  “Wild, crazy shit, eh?” Saxon asked.

  “And yet there’s a sameness to them,” said Colonel Pratt.

  “Like temple artwork,” said Calvino.

  “I’m no art expert. Yadanar says every painting in this mansion came from somebody’s dream.”

  Saxon peeled off to whisper something to Ohn Myint.

  Returning a couple of minutes later, he said, “Follow me. There’s more. A lot more to see.”

  Saxon led them past a series of rooms, unused bedrooms warehousing hundreds of paintings. Flipping on the light, Saxon stepped into one of the rooms. No one was inside. There was a bed with paintings stacked on it. Empty closets had been used to store more paintings, leaning them one against the other like folders in a filing cabinet.

  “Every room is like this. Filled with paintings. Or musical instruments or books. Sometimes all three are mixed together. Yadanar’s grandfather was a bookstore owner.”

  “You already told us that, Jack,” said Calvino.

  “I repeat myself when I’m stoned. What I was trying to say is the grandfather wanted all of his children to love the arts with a passion.”

  “Looks like he got his wish,” said Colonel Pratt.

  “The grandfather should have been careful what he wished for,” said Saxon, “because getting your wish granted can be a curse.”

  “The same with dreams,” said Calvino.

  “Same, same,” said Saxon. “You haven’t heard the story?”

  Calvino shook his head.

  “Ohn Myint, tell them the story about the paintings. The one you told me.”

  There was nothing shy about Ohn Myint. She was direct and looked them straight in the eye, the way she’d looked in the eye of the MI agent on the 10K run.

  She explained how Yadanar’s mother, father, aunts, uncles and cousins exchanged dreams, the images jumping along the family tree like wood lice. The dreams were written down in a book kept at the 42nd Street bookshop for years. Dreams were written out and given to painters, some of the most celebrated of Burmese artists, who took very little in exchange for their work for Yadanar’s family. Yadanar’s mansion housed paintings that went back more than sixty years. The grandfather was obsessed with finding a family member to become the curator of the paintin
gs. He wanted to skip a generation, and that meant Mya or Yadanar’s generation, his grandchildren.

  Looking around the mansion, it was clear that the family tradition of curating dream art had passed to Yadanar when he was a small boy. Dates of the passage of the art to his side of the family had some curious features. In 1988 the grandfather had died, and the bookshop deed had been passed by Mya’s mother to Mya’s aunt—Yadanar’s mother. Also in 1988 Yadanar’s father’s advancement up the ranks in the military stalled. He felt that the grandfather’s bookshop had been a curse on his career. He wanted it shut down. He also wanted the paintings. Once he had succeeded in acquiring all of the paintings from his wife’s family, his career took off in the army, and he became a high-ranking official in the military government. The rumor was this good fortune had come about after he had gained possession of all of the paintings.

  The grandfather had expressed to his wife that Mya, his granddaughter, should inherit the paintings. She could sing like an angel. She loved books and hanging out in the bookshop. But his dream hadn’t come to pass. Why had Yadanar’s family gone to the trouble of taking the bookshop and the artwork, and preventing Mya’s return from Thailand?

  Marrying a soldier had disappointed the grandfather, who had banished Yadanar’s mother from the family. If only he’d lived long enough to see that his grandson would be artistic, a lover of art and music.

  The paintings had long enjoyed a legendary reputation for foretelling. The owner of them had a portal into the future. According to Mya’s aunt, her husband, the general, used the paintings to make his plans. He gave information as favors to his superiors. They won lotteries, promotions, beautiful women and business deals. He never publicly admitted to what others would call black magic, but he never denied the use of the paintings for fortune-telling, either.

  When Ohn Myint had finished her story, Saxon said, “The Burmese are big on dreams. Carl Jung was Burmese in a prior life.”

  Ohn Myint drifted off for a drink. The three men stood around looking at the paintings. Neither Colonel Pratt nor Calvino could see how the future unfolded in the images.